1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a touch panel and a driving method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a touch panel and a driving method thereof, wherein the touch panel is equipped with functions of contact-touch, non-contact touch, and multi-touch and can be operated via objects made of conductive materials or dielectric materials.
2. Description of Related Art
Information technologies (ITs), wireless mobile communications, and information home appliances have been rapidly developed and widely applied. To meet current demands on portable, compact, and user-friendly IT products, touch panels have been introduced as input interfaces in replacement of conventional keyboards or mice.
At this current stage, the touch panels can be categorized into a resistive touch panel and a capacitive touch panel based on their driving manner and structural design. To operate a resistive touch panel, a user should press the resistive touch panel, such that parts of areas within the resistive touch panel are electrically conducted and thereby coordinate signals indicative of coordinates of touch points are produced. This type of touch panel exhibits a disadvantage of low durability. Moreover, the resistive touch panel can only sense a single-touch input, while the resistive touch panel is not able to recognize multi-touch gestures. Hence, consumers' demands on diverse functions of the products cannot be satisfied.
On the contrary, the capacitive touch panel has a multiple touch sensing feature and thus has become more and more popular. In addition, no direct touch contact is required by operating the capacitive touch panel, and therefore the capacitive touch panel is relatively durable in comparison with the resistive touch panel. Moreover, the capacitive touch panel which can be operated in a non-contact manner can be placed within housings of the IT products, so as to look after the consumers' requirements for fantastic exterior designs of the IT products. However, notwithstanding the easy operation, the capacitive touch panel cannot be operated by the users wearing gloves or by means of insulating materials. As such, said two types of the touch panels are barely satisfactory so far and further improvement is deemed necessary.